Fred Deluca, the founder of the Subway chain of restaurants, has given a short but revealing interview on CNBC (video here).

First, he’s no economist. At one point he says that while the minimum wage should rise, what Subway pays “depends on the market”. What he was doing, albeit unknowingly, is identify that markets set wages, not regulations, and that those whose market clearing wage is below the minimum wage are effectively declared unemployable. It’s illegal to employ them at their market wage. As Murray Rothbard explained, the result is compulsory unemployment.

It’s after this that he says that increasing regulations hamper his business and says that Subway would not exist, if he tried to start out now, given all the new regulations. Here he helps explain why it is so difficult for many to get nothing but menial jobs. It’s the seen and unseen. Most people don’t realise that many firms are not being started, that entrepreneurs are being incentivised to not take a risk, because of laws and regulations. They don’t realise it simply because no-one ever saw those firms with their own eyes. Government regulations are severely curtailing the number of start-ups, which would otherwise exist, and that’s where a lot of new quality jobs come from.

Forty-one per cent of town halls will ignore pleas from Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles for a freeze on the tax, according to a survey. Despite soaring living costs and the resulting squeeze on family budgets, they plan to forego Mr Pickles’s offer of an extra Government grant in exchange for agreeing to the freeze. The average band D bill is likely to rise by 0.8 per cent or £11.74 to almost £1,500. Last year’s typical rise was 0.3 per cent. The largest increases will be in Yorkshire and Humberside, where some bills will go up by £16.30. Among those councils foregoing the grant, rises are likely to average 1.1 per cent, the annual study by the Chartered Institute of Public finance and Accountancy found .

A VERY small number of Town Halls are cutting Council tax but it is remarkable that 41% of them CHOOSE to increase this tax even at a time when central Government are prepared to subsidise freeze. And therein lies another truth – the more power you give to ANY form of government, the more it will exercise it. The central issue is lack of financial rigour, endemic across the public sector. Councils SHOULD be trying to cut tax EVERY year by finding savings through greater efficiency, but as we all know, this is a phantasm within local government despite the rhetoric.

“Ireland’s trade union chief has accused the EU-IMF troika in charge of Irish austerity policies of tipping the economy into downward spiral and acting as an imperial oppressor. “The Troika has done more damage to Ireland than Britain ever did in 800 years,” said David Begg, head of the Irish Confederation of Trade Unions.

Mr Begg said the image of Ireland as the poster-child of EU recovery was a myth cultivated by EU creditors whose only interest is to recoup their money. “At least the IMF officials are willing to admit they have been wrong but the EU officials are total ideologues.” “It is like being in an awful World War One conflict where the generals have expended a million lives to gain one yard of ground, yet nothing will change their mind in face of all the evidence.”

The trade unions say internal consumption has collapsed by 26pc, and investment has fallen to the lowest level in recorded Irish history. Under-employment has reached 23pc despite emigration to Canada, Australia, the US and Britain. “The austerity has to stop. People feel they are drowning,” he said.

There is some truth in what he says. Ireland is drowning in debt and the idea that it can somehow trade itself out of the chasm it fell into as a result of EU imposed austerity is indeed madness. But Ireland cannot have it every way either. If it wants to stay in the EU (And that is universal truth in the Republic) then it shouldn’t complain when the price levied is so very high. The best thing the Republic could do is LEAVE the EU but it won’t and so whilst Mr Beggs makes some valid points in the final analysis you cannot have your EU cake and eat it.

Should convicts have the “human right” to get expensive NHS treatment for IVF? Logically, one would say NO but we live at a time when “rights” trump responsibilities and have the European Court as their guarantor.

Chris Grayling last night pledged to face down Strasbourg human rights judges and stop prisoners getting IVF at taxpayers’ expense.In a highly combative move, the Justice Secretary made clear he wants a ban on convicts accessing costly fertility treatment from behind bars.The European Court of Human Rights has ruled blocking prisoners’ access to treatment may breach their right to a ‘private and family life’.

This “right” to a “private and family life” is the most pernicious manifestation of political activism cloaked as law.

Since a 2007 case involving a British killer, 13 inmates have demanded the right to father children, citing the decision. In 2011, one application was approved by then Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt. But today Mr Grayling, a critic of human rights rulings, said: ‘I am extremely concerned about prisoners having access to artificial insemination, which is why I am reviewing the policy with a view to banning it. ‘There can be no clearer example of why we need changes to the human rights framework.’ In December, it was revealed five life prisoners, four murderers and a drug dealer, had made applications to the Ministry of Justice for fertility treatment. The decision on what happens ultimately rests with the Justice Secretary.

I’m sorry but when it comes to pandering to the alleged needs of murderers and drug dealers in respect of IVF, we really have lost the plot. Gray

Let’s get a fundamental proposition straight. In a free market, private business SHOULD allowed to reward those who work for it in whatever way it sees fit. The concept of a bonus payment is perfectly sensible and is no concern of Government. Unless, of course, you live in the EU.

European Union officials have struck a provisional deal on new financial rules, including capping bank bonuses. Under the agreement, bonuses will be capped at a year’s salary, but can rise to two year’s pay if there is explicit approval from shareholders. The deal was reached late on Wednesday. EU ministers must approve it, although this is considered a formality. The UK, which hosts Europe’s biggest financial services centre, was opposed to any of caps on bank bonuses.

Such opposition means nothing.

The EU exists to regulate, to control, and it knows that this new regulation will drive business OUT of the UK, as the City of London has made clear. To the Eurocrats, that is a price worth us paying.

But beyond that there is the deeper point as to who controls the decision making process of business. The EU has decided it will set the standards. What can go wrong with that then?

Parents of students at a Texas high school are outraged after discovering their children have been encouraged to dress in Islamic clothing and taught to refer to the 9/11 hijackers not as terrorists but as ‘freedom fighters.’ Students in a Lumberton High School geography class were also told to stop referring to the Holocaust as Genocide and were instead told to use the term ‘ethnic cleansing.’ A photograph of five female students wearing burqas surfaced on Facebook, sparking an angry outburst from the mother of one of the girls.

Has the teacher been arrested? Look at the above – this is a Texan school in 2013.

As a single mother claiming benefits, Jay Cole says she is doing everything she can to get a job. But she believes there is one main reason why employers won’t take her on – her 22-stone weight. After taking part in numerous job interviews without any success, the 24-year-old says employers take one look at her and decide she is not suitable for the job. Speaking on This Morning, she said: ‘I have gone for everything. Cleaning jobs, retail, nursery nurse. But when I go to interviews you can see the disappointment automatically. ‘They think that fat people are lazy and not capable and cannot do what normal sized people can do.’ She suggested new laws should be brought in to stop employers discriminating against large people.

Tellingly, she asks why should SHE have to change? The answer is ; If she wants a job she needs to lose a few pounds, apparently. To try and claim her obsesity as a disease is just an indulgence for what seems a total lack of control. I am sure employers will take many factors into consideration when assessing her suitability but 22 STONE is a lot of weight.

I am sure you are like me and have looked at images of the Maldives as “heaven on earth”.

But in recent years, Islam has taken a hold and hence stories like THIS;

A 15-year-old rape victim has been sentenced to 100 lashes for engaging in premarital sex, court officials said. The charges against the girl were brought against her last year after police investigated accusations that her stepfather had raped her and killed their baby. He is still to face trial. Prosecutors said her conviction did not relate to the rape case. Amnesty International condemned the punishment as “cruel, degrading and inhumane”.

Zaima Nasheed, a spokesperson for the juvenile court, said the girl was also ordered to remain under house arrest at a children’s home for eight months. She defended the punishment, saying the girl had willingly committed an act outside of the law. Officials said she would receive the punishment when she turns 18, unless she requested it earlier. The case was sent for prosecution after police were called to investigate a dead baby buried on the island of Feydhoo in Shaviyani Atoll, in the north of the country. Her stepfather was accused of raping her and impregnating her before killing the baby. The girl’s mother also faces charges for failing to report the abuse to the authorities. The legal system of the Maldives, an Islamic archipelago with a population of some 400,000, has elements of Islamic law (Sharia) as well as English common law.

I’m guessing that Sharia is the bit that thinks flogging a 15 year old rape victim is appropriate?

As you know, millions of Romanians will be coming our way next year and we can be assured they will add much needed multiculturalist gaiety to British national life. They are already are..

Shock figures show that the ­Metropolitan Police made 27,725 ­arrests of Romanians over the past five years for offences including rape and ­murder. This is despite just 68,000 ­Romanians living here at present – a figure set to soar when Britain has to open its borders next January under an EU directive. The crime statistics undermine reassurances from Romanian officials that the UK has nothing to fear from the lowering of border controls. Tory MP Priti Patel said: “These figures show why, with 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians gaining unrestricted access to the UK, more needs to be done to control immig­ration and to safeguard the British public from foreign criminals.

Well, Priti, you are right in one sense and simultaneously deluded in another. Of course we should control immigration and of course we should stop ALL Romanians and Bulgarians coming here but we can’t. They are fellow EU nations and their citizens have a perfect legal right to come here … and the only way to stop this is to LEAVE the EU. I remind you that the Conservatives, Lib-Dems and Labour are COMMITTED to keeping us in Europe so I guess the Met are going to very busy in time to come !

I christened it the McUnionist Party but the two men forming haven’t got quite that far yet!

Two former Ulster Unionists who resigned over a decision to field a joint by-election candidate with the DUP are setting up a new party. Basil McCrea and John McCallister said their party will be “confident, progressive and pro-union”. The pair resigned from the UUP earlier this month after the party agreed to a single unionist candidate to contest the Mid Ulster by-election on 7 March. So far, they are the only two members and the party has no name as yet. By the time it is officially launched, probably in April, both those things will have changed.

Gosh, do you think so? I DO hope so as a name is helpful. It’s remarkable watching the media fawn over the dynamic dup of McCrea and McCallister. If you want to invoke media sympathies, do make sure your unionism is wafer thin and your liberalism is carried where all can see it. I have no doubt these guys will be wiped out come the next election and it is well seen that some of their more vocal supporters are Nationalists.

David Vance Live 21.1.19. Topics. Plan B for banjaxed? Irish terrorism to stop Brexit? Native American and fake new… pscp.tv/w/bxYgbzI0OTEx…

THE PRICE OF REWARDING TERRORISM

You do not defeat terrorism by rewarding terrorists, regardless of how many bleeding heart liberals argue otherwise. Want to know where that flawed approach leads to? Read UNIONISM DECAYED 1997-2007 - It's my first book and it explains what happens when you seeek to appease terrorists and call it peace. It's available right now for ATW readers so make sure you get your copy by emailing the editor! This is the book that dissents from the herd mentality that doing wrong can lead to being right. It doesn't and this book spells out WHY.

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